Steam Deck 2 isn’t coming for years & Valve explains why

Valve’s next Steam Deck handheld might not hit the market for a years, as the company gets in front of any refresh speculation.

The Steam Deck, Valve’s handheld PC, has seen enormous success. It’s sold so many units, that it has managed to move the needle for Linux users on Steam. However, there’s been some speculation regarding an updated version as new documents appeared.

These now seem like the documents point to new VR hardware from Valve, as Pierre-Loup Griffais, who works on the Steam Deck, has said not to expect anything for at least a couple of years.

Griffais points out that changing the Steam Deck’s hardware isn’t as simple as it seems. The player base coming to the Deck hardware is expecting unified performance, something Valve isn’t taking lightly.

Speaking to The Verge and CNBC, Griffais said:

“It’s important to us that the Deck offers a fixed performance target for developers, and that the message to customers is simple, where every Deck can play the same games.

“As such, changing the performance level is not something we are taking lightly, and we only want to do so when there is a significant enough increase to be had.”

Don’t expect the Steam Deck 2 any time soon

He also mentions that upgrading the system as it is could lead to worse battery life. The Steam Deck already has a limited battery life when playing modern games, and compounding on that with a new CPU could lead to an overall worse device:

“We also don’t want more performance to come at a significant cost to power efficiency and battery life.”

It’s not all bad news though, as a Steam Deck 2 refresh being properly planned out could lead to a genuine leap in technology. We’ve already seen Zen 4 and RDNA 3 enabled chips best the Steam Deck handily, but Valve isn’t settling for the next best thing:

“I don’t anticipate such a leap to be possible in the next couple of years, but we’re still closely monitoring innovations in architectures and fabrication processes to see where things are going there.”

A recent update to SteamOS, Valve’s custom operating system, increased performance in some major titles by a considerable amount. Despite running a much older chip, the Van Gogh processor inside can now reach new performance heights than what was previously understood.